While all major platforms can access the Internet using web browsers, they could not interact with each other over the Internet. For these platforms to work together, web-applications were developed. Web-applications are applications that run on the web. These are built around the web browser standards and can be used by any browser on any platform.
Web services allow an application to publish its function or message to the rest of the world. Web services use Extensible Markup Language (XML) to code and to decode data, and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to transport it (using open protocols). Web services can help to solve the interoperability problem by giving different applications and different platforms a way to link their data.
Use of the same reference numbers in different figures indicates similar or identical elements.